Dominion v Fox - Dominion Voting Sues Fox News for $1.6B over 2020 Election Claims in Delaware

[raison de arizona]

Ah, the long standing “some people say.

[humblescribe]

I really don't see the problem here. If it was pulled of the internet then it was, by definition, impeccably researched, sourced and vetted. After all, it couldn't be on the Internet if it was true!!!!

Sadly, that will be the defense.

They’ll say Perrino wasn’t acting in reckless disregard of the truth or falsity of the defamatory statements. Instead, they’ll say, she was souring the darkest corners of the internet looking to confirm what she was hearing, as any responsible journalist would do since the mainstream media doesn’t have a monopoly on the truth.

It’s bullshit, I know, but mark my words. They’ll spin this as the nervous rantings of one Henny Penny news producer, and offer it up as proof that they were not acting with reckless disregard.

EXCEPT: I do recall that at some point fairly early on the network, Fox, at least, stopped with the claims about the electronic voting machines, and might have issued a correction, but I might be misremembering that part. Anyhoo, the timing of the email in relationship to those events (if I remember them correctly ) might matter.

My dim bulb memory recalls the following: Smartmatic was named over and over as supplying voting machines nationwide for the 2020 election. In fact, only Los Angeles County used Smartmatic voting machines.

Smartmatic sent a cease and desist letter to Fox News sometime in December 2020 and asking for a retraction.

Fox recorded a sixty-second retraction of sorts by using an unknown computer expert (allegedly) to explain some things about the election. This retraction was aired for a couple of days on all the personality shows, usually right before the top of the hour. i do not believe that Fox ever said they regretted their choice of words or their assertions. Instead this so-called taped message skirted around the issues.

I tried to find it on YouTube to no avail.

[raison de arizona]

I really don't see the problem here. If it was pulled of the internet then it was, by definition, impeccably researched, sourced and vetted. After all, it couldn't be on the Internet if it was true!!!!

Sadly, that will be the defense.

They’ll say Perrino wasn’t acting in reckless disregard of the truth or falsity of the defamatory statements. Instead, they’ll say, she was souring the darkest corners of the internet looking to confirm what she was hearing, as any responsible journalist would do since the mainstream media doesn’t have a monopoly on the truth.

It’s bullshit, I know, but mark my words. They’ll spin this as the nervous rantings of one Henny Penny news producer, and offer it up as proof that they were not acting with reckless disregard.

EXCEPT: I do recall that at some point fairly early on the network, Fox, at least, stopped with the claims about the electronic voting machines, and might have issued a correction, but I might be misremembering that part. Anyhoo, the timing of the email in relationship to those events (if I remember them correctly ) might matter.

My dim bulb memory recalls the following: Smartmatic was named over and over as supplying voting machines nationwide for the 2020 election. In fact, only Los Angeles County used Smartmatic voting machines.

Smartmatic sent a cease and desist letter to Fox News sometime in December 2020 and asking for a retraction.

Fox recorded a sixty-second retraction of sorts by using an unknown computer expert (allegedly) to explain some things about the election. This retraction was aired for a couple of days on all the personality shows, usually right before the top of the hour. i do not believe that Fox ever said they regretted their choice of words or their assertions. Instead this so-called taped message skirted around the issues.

I tried to find it on YouTube to no avail.

Here's some info: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcev ... dc0a5fcfd2
Moar, including part of the video: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/ ... smartmatic

[humblescribe]

That be it!

Well done, RdA!

[raison de arizona]

Xpost

“Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox News, will be deposed on Monday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News for amplifying bogus claims that rigged machines from Dominion Voting Systems were responsible for Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020.”

[Kendra]

Xpost

https:// twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1599477801752530945

“Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox News, will be deposed on Monday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News for amplifying bogus claims that rigged machines from Dominion Voting Systems were responsible for Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020.”

TY. I tried to find the right post, but didn't try hard enough

[Kendra]

Rupert Murdoch will be forced to answer questions under oath next week about his network's coverage of the 2020 election.

Murdoch will be deposed on Dec. 13 and 14 as part of Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[Suranis]

He will probably do his usual thing, and say he does not remember anything.

[RTH10260]

Midas Touch reports on Dominion claiming spoilation of evidence (deleted emails) in their case

no other source located at this time

[Kendra]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/busi ... ction.html

On Nov. 30, 2020, Sean Hannity hosted Sidney Powell on his prime-time Fox News program. As she had in many other interviews around that time — on Fox and elsewhere in right-wing media — Ms. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, spun wild conspiracy theories about what she said was “corruption all across the country, in countless districts,” in a plot to steal re-election from the president, Donald J. Trump.

At the center of this imagined plot were machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which Ms. Powell claimed ran an algorithm that switched votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Dominion machines, she insisted, were being used “to trash large batches of votes.”

Mr. Hannity interrupted her with a gentle question that had been circulating among election deniers, despite a lack of supporting proof: Why were Democrats silencing whistle-blowers who could prove this fraud?

Did Mr. Hannity believe any of this?

“I did not believe it for one second.”

It's letting me read it, but not a subscriber and can't gift it.

[RTH10260]

a gift link to above:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/busi ... =share-url

continuation quote

Did Mr. Hannity believe any of this?

“I did not believe it for one second.”

That was the answer Mr. Hannity gave, under oath, in a deposition in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, according to information disclosed in a court hearing on Wednesday. The hearing was called to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial, which the judge has scheduled to begin in April.

Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.

[Dave from down under]

because Murdoch was mentioned up threa...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-22/ ... /101800336

Media boss Lachlan Murdoch is seeking to sue more senior figures of news outlet Crikey's publisher, claiming they played a "highly-active role" in defaming him.

Key points:
Lachlan Murdoch claims to have been damaged by an analysis article published in June
He is suing Crikey's publisher, editor-in-chief and political editor
The Federal Court hears two more Private Media figures have been issued with legal notices

The Fox Corporation chief executive launched proceedings over a June analysis piece about the January 6, 2021 insurrection by Donald Trump supporters.

He claims to have been caused serious harm by the Bernard Keane article after it referred to Fox News and the Murdochs as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the deadly event.

[Luke]

Hannity's sin is just hitting the MAGAts.







The sheep are beside themselves. Check out the replies for a laugh.

[RTH10260]

Rupert Murdoch To Face Deposition In Dominion Voting Systems Defamation Lawsuit Against Fox News

Ted Johnson Political Editor
January 19, 2023 10:29am

Rupert Murdoch is scheduled to be deposed today and Friday in Dominion Voting Systems’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News over its amplification of claims that the company was involved in rigging the 2020 presidential election.

Murdoch is the latest high profile Fox figure to face questioning under oath in the discovery phase of the case, with CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott also having been deposed along with on-air figures including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo.

Murdoch is being questioned in Los Angeles on the Fox lot, according to NPR. A deposition scheduled for last month was delayed.

This week, Dominion and Fox News each filed for motions for summary judgment in the case, asking a Delaware judge to issue a ruling in their favor in advance of the trial, scheduled to begin in April. Those motions are still under seal.

Dominion claims that in the aftermath of the election, in which Fox news was the first TV outlet to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, the network sought to “win back viewers” by “connecting Dominion with the false election fraud narrative.” The company contends that Fox News personalities continued to highlight the election claims even after it warned the network that they were false and unfounded. More specifically, Dominion has pointed to statements made by Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, both of whom featured guests such as attorney Sidney Powell. Dobbs’ Fox Business show was dropped in early 2021.

In a statement, a Dominion spokesperson said, “From the highest levels down, Fox knowingly spread lies about Dominion, causing enormous and irreparable damage. Instead of acting responsibly and showing remorse, Fox instead has doubled down by publicly stating that they are proud of their Dominion-related coverage. We’re focused on holding Fox accountable and are confident the truth will ultimately prevail.”




https://deadline.com/2023/01/rupert-mur ... 235227486/

[RTH10260]

Dominion calls out Fox News for failing to produce evidence of fraud: "They can't do it"
Dominion's attorney took the company's complaints to a judge

By MEAGHAN ELLIS
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 9, 2023 1:30PM (EST)

Dominion Voting Systems is calling out the Fox News network and its parent company for failure to produce substantial evidence to support their claims of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

According to CNBC, the company is sounding off because they are less than two months away from the trial pertaining to the defamation lawsuit against the news network.

The remarks were made on Wednesday, February 8 when attorneys for both parties appeared before a Superior Court judge in Delaware.

The news outlet reports: "An attorney for Dominion said there was concern regarding certification requirements and evidence — such as certain board meeting minutes and the results of searches of personal drives — that have yet to be produced by Fox and its cable TV networks. While this issue was already raised in July and January, the Dominion attorney said Wednesday they are still missing documents."

Justin Nelson, one of the attorneys representing Dominion, verbalized his concerns.

"We have not gotten anything. We pointed out categories of missing documents for both Fox News and Fox Corp that are still missing. And we are not talking about a document slipping through ... we are talking about categories of documents," said Nelson.

He also said that the legal team representing Fox news legal team would "ask the hard questions about missing documents so that we didn't have to do it and engage in further discovery practice."

"And that just hasn't happened," Nelson said, "and I understand why because they can't do it."

However, Dan Webb, an attorney representing Fox News, argues otherwise.




https://www.salon.com/2023/02/09/domini ... t_partner/

reference to original article at https://www.alternet.org/dominion-votin ... -fox-news/

[MN-Skeptic]

Edited to add - go read the whole thread.

[MN-Skeptic]

Gift link to the New York Times article -

Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. ‘Crazy Stuff.’

And a link to Dominion's recent filing - https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ ... f/full.pdf

[Luke]

Thank you so much, MN! What a day between the Kari Lake smackdown, the GA Grand Jury notes, and this. The Dominion v Fox trial is going to move some voters, I'd bet on it. The lies and grifting are coming back to bite them in the ass and I'm here for that. That Steve Bannon quote about destroying Joe Biden's presidency is exactly what this madness was about. It's taking too long for many of us, but while MAGAts think it's over, it's just beginning.

[poplove]

Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
According to the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, one of the sources for the network's "election fraud" information said she got her information from "experiencing something like time-travel in a semi-conscious state" that allows her to "see what others don't see."

[Slim Cognito]

It reads as if Mad Magazine did a satire piece on a bunch of wackos claiming an election was stolen, only it's not satire.

[RTH10260]

Tucker Carlson told his producer Trump is 'the undisputed world champion' of destroying things and could ruin Fox News if it didn't back his election lies

Sonam Sheth,Jacob Shamsian
Fri, February 17, 2023 at 12:15 AM GMT+1

• Tucker Carlson called Trump the "undisputed world champion" of destroying things, per a new court filing.
  Carlson texted his producer after the 2020 election that Trump could "easily destroy" Fox News if "we play it wrong."
  Carlson's text came after Fox News ignited Trump's fury by being the first to call Arizona for Biden.

Two days after Election Day 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson texted his producer warning that Fox New's decision to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night could spell doom for the network.

That's according to a newly released court filing Thursday. The document, a 200-page motion for summary judgment in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit against Fox News, featured multiple deposition excerpts and texts from top Fox News figures including Carlson, Sean Hannity, Rupert Murdoch, and others.

Fox was the first cable news network to project Biden's victory in Arizona, prompting a slew of angry phone calls and texts from people in Trump's camp.

"We worked really hard to build what we have," Carlson texted his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, on November 5, 2020, according to the filing. "Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me."

Carlson added that he had spoken with fellow primetime commentators Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity minutes earlier and that they were "highly upset."

"At this point we're getting hurt no matter what," he wrote, according to the filing.

Pfeiffer replied that "many on 'our side' are being reckless demagogues right now."

"Of course they are," Carlson wrote. "We're not going to follow them." He went on to say that Trump was good at "destroying things. He's the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong."

At another point the same day, Carlson texted that "we've got to be incredibly careful right now. We could get hurt." It's unclear who the recipient of the message was.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/tucker-carls ... 15596.html

(original: Business Insider)

[RTH10260]

Rupert Murdoch, Fox News Hosts Saw Donald Trump’s Election Fraud Claims As “Crazy” And “B.S.,” Dominion Says In Defamation Filing; Network Calls Lawsuit “An Assault On First Amendment”

Ted Johnson
Fri, February 17, 2023 at 1:20 AM GMT+1

Fox News executives and hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham did not believe Donald Trump’s election fraud claims in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, but the network nevertheless amplified the conspiracy theories as it worried about losing viewers to Newsmax, according to filings from Dominion Voting Systems made public Thursday.

In its motion for summary judgment in its $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox, with a redacted version made public Thursday (read it here), Dominion makes heavy use of text messages and emails from the Fox personalities and staff to contend that the network was well aware that claims made by guests such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani were bogus.

“Really crazy stuff,” Rupert Murdoch wrote in a November 19 text about Giuliani, according to the filing.

Dominion’s lawsuit is over claims, made on air by Powell, Giuliani and others, and then advanced by Fox News figures like Lou Dobbs, that it was involved in rigging the results of the 2020 election. Dominion contends that many at the network knew the claims were false, but executives and hosts worried of losing Trump-supporting viewers if Fox News called them out as unfounded. In one instance, Carlson called for one reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, to get fired for tweeting out a fact check of the vote-rigging claims.

In its filing, Dominion’s attorneys wrote: “Fox knew the truth. It knew the allegations against Dominion were ‘outlandish’ and ‘crazy’ and ‘ludicrous’ and ‘nuts.’ Yet it used the power and influence of its platform to promote that false story. Fox knew better.”

With its own motion for summary judgment (read it here and here) also made public, Fox said in a statement that Dominion is taking an “extreme and unsupported view of defamation law and rests on an accounting of the facts that has no basis in the record.” Fox also said that Dominion has “cherry picked quotes stripped of key context” and focused on facts that are irrelevant to defamation law.

“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox said in a statement.

In its motion, Fox’s attorneys argue that Dominion’s lawsuit is an “assault on the First Amendment.” They said that the network was covering something “as newsworthy as it gets”: the attempt by a sitting president to challenge the election results.




https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/rup ... 44625.html

(original: Deadline)

[Suranis]

https://www.nationalmemo.com/fox-news-2659432889

For Dominion to prove defamation, the company must show that Fox acted with “actual malice,” meaning that Fox knew the allegations made about Dominion were false or that Fox acted in reckless disregard for the truth. On February 16, Dominion’s brief calling for a summary judgment in its favor was released to the public. As Dominion detailed in the filing, “literally dozens of people with editorial responsibility—from the top of the organization to the producers of specific shows to the hosts themselves—acted with actual malice.” Indeed, the filing shows “lies in twenty accused statements across six different shows with the active involvement of numerous Fox Executives.”

Here are some of the damning quotes from the filing showing how much Fox’s executives and employees knew they were lying about Dominion or the election at the time:

Fox star Tucker Carlson to his producer Alex Pfeiffer about Sidney Powell, one of Trump's campaign lawyers: “Powell is lying.” [11/16/20]

Host Laura Ingraham to Carlson and fellow host Sean Hannity: “Sidney Powell is a bit nuts. Sorry but she is.” [11/15/20]

Carlson to Ingraham: “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Carlson replied: “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.” [11/19/20]

Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch: “Really crazy stuff.” [11/19/20]

Murdoch after watching Giuliani and Powell on November 19, 2020: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott replied, “Yes Sean [Hannity] and even [Jeanine] Pirro agrees.” [11/19/20]

Fox reporter Lucas Tomlinson to anchor Bret Baier: “It’s dangerously insane these conspiracy theories.” [12/1/2020]

Fox Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt on whether the allegation that Dominion rigged the election was true: “No reasonable person would have thought that.”

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott responded “Yes, I believe that,” to the question “You believe, since at least the time that Fox News called the election on November 7th, that Joe Biden was legitimately elected the President of the United States, correct?”

As the filing outlined, Carlson texted a redacted name “that it was ‘shockingly reckless’ to claim that Dominion rigged the election ‘if there’s no one inside the company willing to talk, or internal Dominion documents or copies of the software showing that they did it’ and ‘as you know there isn’t.’” [11/21/20]

Fox’s internal “fact checks” about Dominion allegations reported they were “incorrect” and “not evidence of widespread fraud.” [11/13/20; 11/20/20]

After canceling Pirro’s November 7 show, Fox executive David Clark told Executive Vice President of Primetime Programming Meade Cooper: “Her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will just be token.”

Ingraham’s producer Tommy Firth texted Fox executive Ron Mitchell: “This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm—as many times as I’ve told Laura it’s bs, she sees shit posters and trump tweeting about it.” [11/8/20]

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch: “Viewers going through the 5 stages of grief. It’s a question of trust—the AZ [call] was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” Murdoch replied: “Yes. But needs constant rebuilding without any missteps.” Scott responded: “Yes today is day one and it’s a process.” [11/9/20]

Fox News Washington, D.C., Managing Editor Bill Sammon to Fox Political Editor Chris Stirewalt on the network’s coverage of “supposed election fraud”: “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make[] good journalists do bad things.” [12/2/20]

Carlson to Ingraham: Powell’s “a nut, as you said at the outset. It totally wrecked my weekend. Wow... I had to try to make the WH disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before.” Ingraham responded to Carlson: “No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying.” [11/22/20]

Rupert Murdoch told Scott to read a Wall Street Journal piece about Newsmax, telling her: “These people should be watched, if skeptically. Trump will concede eventually and we should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can. We don’t want to antagonize Trump further, but Giuliani taken with a large grain of salt. Everything at stake here.” [11/16/20]

Scott: “Privately, I had a number of conversations with Sean where he wanted the President to accept the results.”

After White House correspondent Kristen Fisher fact-checked Giuliani and Powell’s press conference, she received a call from her boss, Bryan Boughton, in which he “emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it,” and said that Fisher “needed to do a better job of…—this is a quote—‘respecting our audience.’” [11/19/20]

Fox Corp. Senior Vice President Raj Shah wrote: “shit is so crazy right now. so many people openly denying the obvious that Powell is clearly full of it.” Carlson’s producer Alex Pfeiffer replied: “She is a fucking nutcase.” [11/22/20]

Rupert Murdoch told Suzanne Scott, “It’s been suggested our prime time three should independently or together say something like ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won,’” and that such a statement “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election [was] stolen.” [1/5/21]

Carlson complained to Hannity about Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich, who “was ‘fact checking’ a tweet by Trump that mentioned Dominion—and specifically mentioned Hannity’s and Dobbs’ broadcasts that evening discussing Dominion” Carlson reportedly wrote: “Please get her fired. Seriously....What the fuck? I’m actually shocked...It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” [11/12/20]

According to the filing, “Ingraham herself testified that she has no basis to believe Dominion committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 Presidential Election or that it is owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chavez (and agreed its ownership is ‘readily ascertainable’).”
Anchor Dana Perino also called the voter fraud allegations “total bs,” “insane,” and “nonsense.”

Powell sent an email to Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo about voter fraud claims that “Powell had received from a ‘source’ which the author herself describes as ‘pretty wackadoodle.’” According to the filing, “Bartiromo agreed at her deposition that this email was ‘nonsense’ … and inherently unreliable.”

As the filing laid out:

Each circumstantial factor cuts strongly in Dominion’s favor. But here, the words of multiple Fox employees provide overwhelming direct evidence of actual malice. In addition to the evidence cited above, the excerpts below feature just some of the additional examples showing Fox employees knew at the time that these claims—and the guests promoting them—were:

“ludicrous” –Tucker Carlson [11/20/20]
“totally off the rails” –Tucker Carlson [12/24/20]
“F’ing lunatics” –Sean Hannity [12/22/20]
“nuts” –Dana Perino [11/16/20]
“complete bs” –Producer John Fawcett to Lou Dobbs [11/27/20]
“kooky” –Maria Bartiromo, regarding email received from Powell [11/07/20]
“MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS” –Raj Shah, Fox Corporation SVP [11/21/20]

Fox knew that it was pushing lies about Dominion and the election, and the network continued to smear the company and spread conspiracy theories anyway.

[Kendra]

Nicolle Wallace is doing a deep dive on this and Fox News on today's Deadline White House. Worth watching. Sounds like she's going to have Harry Dunn on in the next hour to react to some of this.